Opera 10 has been released as an alpha preview. It showcases a new rendering engine, Presto 2.2, which the company states will improve browsing performance over the previous version by 30 percent, and notably passes Acid3 standards compatibility with a 100 out of 100 score. This article runs it through some benchmarks, checks memory usage, and general browsing experience.
http://www.opera.com/browser/next/ download site for Opera10 .. hope this is better than 9
9.6 is already pretty good
However, on some aspect, I must say, it withdrew from 8 (especially it takes longer to display a page, it waits to have something like 200 KB loaded in order to display something else than a blank screen)
Tools->Preferences->Advanced->Browsing->Loading set to “Redraw instantly”.
Done, but Opera 9.6 still manage to load several KB before displaying anything :/ <9.5 used to be far more responsive ! And the fact they also threaded the image loading, when you click a link, instead to load instantaneously the new page, it continue to load the images in background (threads are not killed) thus delaying the load of the new page, making Opera 9.6 far less responsive than it used to be. Even when you switched on the image loading then disable or put the image on cache, you see that Opera continue to download in background the images queued, while you asked it to stop. Even when you click the ‘Stop’ button, Opera continue to load the queued images, very frustrating…
Kochise
The simple fact that Opera 10a features HTML email composing is enough for me to be satisfied
Why are they comparing development versions of Opera and Chrome with the stable versions of Firefox and IE?
At least the Beta versions of Shiretoko (Firefox 3.1) and IE8 should be used for comparisons, as they both include improved versions of their engines.
It also says the previous highest acid3 score on a public released version of a browser was 79 on Chrome, while I’m quite sure that the realeased version of Firefox 3.1b1 was already over 80, and the 3.1b2 due to be released is now at 93.
I’m still a fan of Opera, but not of tech journalists…
Edited 2008-12-07 10:26 UTC
They made it clear if you read the article that they are comparing alpha quality software with production releases. They are showing you how well it is doing in alpha stage compared with what is out there now.
I think most people reading are going to be impressed with the results. I was.
Why is everyone always so up in arms with comparisons. Hardly any are really all that even it’s just there to give you an idea of what things are like right now.
Edited 2008-12-07 21:36 UTC
Then do a follow-up comparing the status of the Toolkits between Gecko, WebKit and Presto.
If it wasn’t for the fact they dont do a x86_64 Qt4 build, and dont do a shared build either for Qt4 so your stuck with a inconsistant look in KDE4.x.
Well, I don’t know about the 64-bit release, but starting from Opera 10 alpha 1, they have shared Qt4 builds
Please provide a link to the shared qt 4 builds, been waiting for those!!
The 32bit has Qt4 for Debian, but not the 64bit which is stuck in Qt3–it all seems a bit ass backwards.
You would be anyway. They only use Qt widgets for the menubar. They haven’t used Qt scrollbars, buttons, dropboxes, etc since Opera 6.
The qt4 build seems to be using native widgets (oxygen) for everything when you use a native skin, although they look pretty much broken.
Opera dev’s have a closed bug tracking system – users can submit bugs and that’s it.
HTTPS on banking websites hasn’t worked since Opera 9.2x nor has viewing of google groups. Very dissapointing the opera dev’s can’t prioritise serious bugs such as the above over new features. And firefox with extensions is just tooo slow.
Really? Before I came here I just got finished checking my account balance. On a HTTPS banking website. In Opera 10.
What are you talking about?
YES, really! And Opera 10 still does not work with HTTPS for MY bank whereas 9.2x worked fine 😉
And hey have a browse here pal:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsme.internet/…
Google groups have been broken display wise since 9.6
SO WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH, HUH?
Opera.
Opera is like a time a machine, everytime something new comes out – its already in opera.
Tabbed Browsing
Gestures
Loading Pages fast
Acid Test
Hell, it gets everything way ahead of anything else. When I wanted to find out the results of the US election in july, I downloaded opera and went to cnn.com – there it was “Obama wins”. IE, Firefox, Chrome all those people had to wait until after the election.
Thus, if your impatient and want to know what everyone else is going to want, but want to know it ahead of them – get opera.
In fact if you already had opera you probably read this like last week.
* except CSS rounded corners.
sorry for [offtopic]
I once started a conversation here about people using some random words inside their blurbs to link to the main article or to other stuff. Sadly I can’t add a new comment to that conversation now, because it’s too old.
Well, this article here is a good example for that “randomness”, because there are actually two links inside the blurb, but both of them point to the same site. In my opinion, that’s irritating, and I can’t see the point in that.
[/offtopic]
Opera is great, I’m looking forward to the new version. I just hope they’ll get rid of all those black icons they have since 9.5, because they all look the same and thus are not improving usability very much.
I’ve changed the first link to go to the Opera 10 download page, as it should be. I agree with you that ignominious linking is unhelpful.
It’s the search function. Having the search box open on top of a document is just plain inferior to having it in a bar at the bottom like FF has. I do hit Crtl+F on and off and there is nothing more annoying than having to move that box out of site/whatevva…
I understand that the browsers want to distinguish each other on little details of all sorts but this is highly annoying for me; btw, this is also true for other applications.
Opera has an inline search feature. I have it assigned to the dot (.) key, can’t remember if this is the default or not. Anyway, you can define your own shortcut for it, it’s listed as Find Inline
Yes, the search function is also available, just like in Firefox. Either “/” or “.”
In fact, one of the main reasons why I USE Opera is the search feature. The best thing is having short abbreviations for any search engine I want and using them inside the address bar. No need for that “search box” anymore. And the fact that you can define them by yourself is really the best thing I ever saw. Of course Firefox has it too, but guess who’s been the first again
That would be Konqueror.
Web shortcuts and searching via the addressbar have been available for years.
And IE6 had it as well. Not sure about IE5.
Can’t remember if FF 1.x had this or not. I do remember using it in Konq before FF 1.0 was released, though.
How long ago did Opera get it?
I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same feature here. Opera has it since 9 or 8.x or so, and the feature I have in mind is the following:
– right click on any search box on a website (e.g. on youtube, wikipedia, etc) and choose “create search”
– choose an abbreviation like “y” or “w” (can also be more than one char long)
– now you can type “y iced earth” inside the address bar, and he’ll search for “iced earth” on youtube
Such user-definable searches have been in Opera earlier than in Firefox, I’m fairly sure. Before that, there were only some predefined searches (g for Google and so on), and I can’t remember Firefox having those with an abbreviation (only with the extra search box). But of course I could also be wrong, I’m not saying I’m absolutely sure.
I don’t know about Firefox, but you could do this with Konqueror since the early KDE 3 days. Not quite as easily (you have to use a dialog to create the shortcut), but Web Shortcuts are what you are talking about. And they aren’t limited to search queries.
Okay, I just looked it up and it is indeed the same feature. Don’t know if it’s been earlier in it though, but respect to those whoever invented it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_browser#Sear…
Here they say it has been in Opera since 2000, but you can’t know exactly to which degree it has already been similar to what it is today.
I been using linux opera since i can remember…
opera common problems (exclusive or not):
– memory leaks
– pages that don’t function correctly, or not at all
– flash plugin (massive memory consumption, freezes)
(started using flashblocker)
For all the years I have used opera in linux
these problems have yet to be completely fixed…
there are releases that are good and others almost unusable.
And for what it seems the 10 version is continuing on the same path of the previous versions whether it as version bumps or other cool features its basically the same thing and the same problems.
what does ACID3 100/100 mean when I have to use other browsers to make some functionality work in a page.
“Getting a score of 100 is not the same as passing Acid3 – a common misconception, or perhaps an oversimplification.” – http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid3/